Two Seasons
I was made to write this for class as an assignment, and my parents said I should post it online. So... I did. Chapter 1: Boiling Cold London, England, February 28, 2011 “Oh, god it’s hot!” Complained Jordan. “You’re telling me,” said his Dad. “Some last day of winter.” Jordan’s Mum walked in, opened the fridge, took out a jug of water and poured four glasses. She sculled the first, gave the second one to Jordan, the third to his dad, and poured the last all over her face. Jordan stared. “Do you have a better idea?” asked his Mum. London, England, March 01, 2011 “So cold!” said Jordan, teeth chattering. His father grunted in agreement. Jordan typed something into his computer, then moved closer to the heater. His mother looked up from her newspaper. “What’re you searching?” “Oh, just —“ He stopped mid-sentence, and turned pale. “It’s worldwide.” “What is?” Asked his mother. “The freak weather. And it all changed at the same moment.” Suddenly, the phone rang. Jordan picked it up. “Hel—“ His Mum grabbed it from him. “Hello?” She said. “Oh, hi... yes, yes, Jordan was just telling us... Yeah, I’ll be sure too... uh-huh. Yes, I’ll tell him right away. Bye!” His Mum put down the phone, was about to talk, and then the phone rang again. She rolled her eyes, picked up the phone, listened for a moment, then gave it to her husband. “Hello?” He said. “Oh, hi mate. Snowing? In autumn? In Australia?” He listened for a bit. “No, Over here it’s not snowing, how hot was it yesterday? Huh, hotter than here. But I suppose it was winter here. Yeah, good point... okay, bye.” Quito, Ecuador, March 02,2011 Morana opened her e-mail, and saw six new messages. She scrolled through them. Spam, spam, spam, subscription, spam... and one email from a boy in England. She opened it, then started reading it. Subject: Two Seasons From: Jordan Thompson (jthompson@hotmail.com) Hi, I’m Jordan. Your father works with my mother, and last night she told me to e-mail you about this. I have three questions: How hot is it today? (In London, it’s 46°C) How cold was it yesterday? (It was -23°C Here) Is it flooding? (It is here, because all the water froze yesterday, then melted and flooded most of England today) My Dad has a friend in Australia who works at the Canberra space centre. He says over there on Friday it was 56.7°, which is the hottest it’s been since the gold rush in the 1850’s, but yesterday it was snowing. Try and reply quickly. Jordan Morana considered for a moment, then quickly hit reply. Chapter 2: Deep Freeze London, England, March 02, 2011 Subject: Re: Two Seasons From: moranac@hotmail.com Jordan! I just realised something! Almost all the water on the planet froze yesterday, and it flooded almost all of the dry land on the planet today, so it’ll freeze again tomorrow. And it’s flooded my whole room! My laptop works wirelessly, luckily, but I have to sit on top of my brothers’ bunk bed or my laptop won’t work! Everyone’s going to be frozen solid at midnight! Morana Jordan and Morana had been emailing each other for several hours, not much of importance until now. Jordan quickly typed up his response. Of course! We need to fix this really quickly, before everyone freezes or drowns in the floods that will follow! So we need to find out why this happened, how to fix it, and convince someone to fix it, all within twelve hours! Jordan hit send, opened up an internet browser, and got back to his researching. Chapter 3: Unnatural DIsasters London, England, March 02, 2011 Jordan was trying to find something about what had caused the “incident”. After his extensive research, he had scrawled down a list of possibilities. Possibilities: o Just another natural disaster o The earth’s rotation being changed o A weird effect of global warming o Massive coincidence Jordan looked up the definition of a natural disaster on Wikipedia: A natural disaster is the effect of a natural hazard (e.g., flood, tornado, hurricane, volcanic eruption, haiti earthquake, or landslide) that affects the environment, and leads to financial, environmental and/or human losses. No, it couldn’t really be that. He knew the last one was absolutely bogus, and so was any explanation not on the list, so that left two. He crossed out the ones he had eliminated.They both seemed unlikely, but both were possible. But something would have had to cause the rotation problem. Of course – Natural Disasters! Earthquakes could alter rotation, make things spin faster or slower, or on their side. And there had been plenty of earthquakes recently to cause that to happen. He opened up the UK meteorological survey, looked at what type of rotation patterns could have led to the odd weather, and what amount of natural disasters could have caused any changes to the Earth’s rotation. According to the website, earthquakes could well lead to changes to the rotation, and more, just the type of changes that could change the weather. According to research from the University of Uppsala, the best way to fix it would be an artificial earthquake near the equator, in an isolated area. He picked up the phone, dialled in Morana’s number, and waited. Quito, Ecuador, March 02, 2011 Evelyn, Morana’s Step-Mum, was the one who picked up the phone. “Hola?” She asked, in Spanish. “Sorry, I don’t speak Spanish, do you know English? The voice on the other end. “Yes. This is Evelyn Collins. And you are?” “Jordan Thompson, Could I please speak to Morana?” “Probably not, she’s on her brothers’ bed e-mailing some English boy and she won’t come down, and the phone doesn’t work wirelessly so I can’t just get her to talk to you from there.” “Uh, the English boy is me, could you please tell her I’m on the phone?” “Fine.” Evelyn took her ear off the phone and yelled to Morana. ”Morana! Alguien en el teléfono para que!” “Quién es?” Morana asked. “Jordan Thompson, o alguien.” Morana quickly came down the hall. “Hi, what is it?” “I think I’ve figured out how it happened.” “And?” “The earth’s rotation was changed by the earthquakes and all of that stuff.” “Oh. Wow. So, how can we change it back?” “An artificial earthquake near the equator. We need mining equipment and explosives, and we need to convince someone to actually do it.” “Well, mining equipment would include explosives, and there’s a city in Ecuador called Portovelo that has a mine. Now we just need to persuade an adult to actually do it.” “You do that, I’ll try and calculate the amount of explosives we need and where we need to do it. Oh, and my mobile is 938590433. Now – go – start working!” Chapter 4: Successful Failure Quito Airport, Ecuador, March 02, 2011 Morana looked at her ticket to Portovelo. Her parents had only agreed to take her because they were fully aware that most of the world could be frozen solid, or then flooded, if they didn’t, and this, as far as they knew, was the only possible solution anyone on earth had thought of. Her father had a lot of influence with local business contacts, and he had convinced them to try this. An announcement came over the speakers. “Now boarding flight AAC2760, rows 1-16.” Morana looked nervously at her watch. 10 hours until freeze-time. The flight took half an hour, then there was a two hour truck ride to get the mining equipment to the coast, leaving them one and a half hours to get everything set up. She had checked with Jordan where to do it, and that’s where he said, but they had already booked the flight to Portovelo to get the equipment. “Now boarding flight AAC2760, rows 17- 32.” Morana and her parents stood up, and started walking to the plane. London, England, March 02, 2011 Jordan sighed, annoyed. No calculators could figure out the amount of explosives were needed. He had only four hours to figure it out. So far the location was all he had, and all he had to work on that was it needed to reverse the effects of the Earthquakes. London, England, March 03, 2011 Jordan groaned in annoyance. The big problem was that he didn’t know exactly when the rotation had been altered. He dialled Morana’s mobile and waited. A voice came through from the other end. It wasn’t Morana’s. “The number you have called is not available. Please standby.” Jordan hung up. She was obviously already on the plane. He would call her again in half an hour. Flight AAC2760, Ecuador March 03, 2011 A thought occurred to Morana. The airport hadn’t been frozen or flooded. She pressed the button above her to call a flight attendant. “Disculpe, pero cómo es que el aeropuerto no se inundó?” She asked, which meant in English “Excuse me, but how come the airport wasn't flooded?” {C The flight attendant responded in English. “We used some infared lights to melt the ice and evaporate the water. Anything else?” {C “No, gracias,”'' The flight'' attendant walked away. Morana looked out the window. She looked up at the sun then looked straight back down. She looked at her watch. They were about to land. As if on cue, the plane started descending. It landed about 30 seconds later. As soon as she could, Morana ran out of the plane. She called Jordan immediately. He responded in seconds. “Change of plans.” she said “The artificial earthquake is a dangerous method of fixing this, and the airport isn’t frozen or flooded. They used infared lights to evaporate the water. We can do the same” {C “Unrealistic. And we need a long-term solution. {C “Yes, but we need a short term as well.” {C “I suppose that could work... but I still need to calculate the correct amount of explosives for the long term solution.” {C “I don’t think explosives are safe. We need a different method. A safe one.” {C “Well, I suppose there is the comet or meteorite solution... I’ll give it a try.” {C “Good. So, what’s the comet solution?” {C “Nudging comets in the direction of planets. If you graze the atmosphere of a planet, its rotation can change. I’ll work on the calculations.” {C “Wow, I hope your aim’s good. Bye.” {C “Bye.” {C Morana hung up. She knew her parents would be annoyed a lot by this, but it was a much better idea. She walked over to her parents. “Papá? You need to call the miners. We can't do it. It's not safe to cause an earthquake.” {C Morana was right about her parents being annoyed. But they weren’t as annoyed as she’d thought they would be. {C “Muy bien. Fine. What do we need to do instead?” {C “Well... Gather infared lights – and maybe some satellites as well – and evaporate all of the water. Oh, and after that we would need to cause comets or meteors to graze the atmosphere of earth and fix the earth's rotation.” “Bueno ...'' ''.. how do we do that?” “First, get our hands on as many infrared light bulbs and torches as possible, then contact NASA and Roscosmos – maybe through Jordan’s Dad's contacts at the Canberra space centre” Her father nodded. Morana didn’t think it would be that easy. As she was about to find out, she was right. Nothing was that easy. Chapter 5: Shining Light New York, United States, March 02, 2011 A major United Nations meeting was going on. There was no time to get the prime ministers and presidents, so the ambassadors from as many countries as possible were there instead. Barely anything could be heard. The Chinese ambassador was arguing with the French ambassador over whether they should do anything at all, the American president (Well, it was in America, so he could make it) was yelling at the English ambassador for suggesting that children might’ve been correct, and The Italian ambassador and the Japanese ambassador were teaming up against New Zealand’s Ambassador on the fact that an explosion would be much more efficient than some infrared lights and an artificial meteor shower. It was absolute chaos. Which was bad. All the governments had already stocked up on ultraviolet lights, but they had placed the explosives as well. Now it was just an argument over which method was better. It was split 49/50/1. Most countries agreed on the infrared method, but a lot of them preferred the explosion, and a few didn’t think they should do anything. This argument wouldn’t be easy to win. For anyone. London, England, March 02, 2011 Jordan was unbelievably nervous. 20 minutes to go, and the UN hadn’t made any decision regarding what to do. Most houses had all their light bulbs replaced with infared light bulbs, and had them all turned on, but not all street lights were turned on. All of London and most other parts of England had the water evaporated, along with Ecuador, Ireland, the U.A.E, and most Scandinavian countries. Some countries leaders had already made the decision to use infared, but most were still waiting for the decision. He turned on the TV and flicked through the channels, trying to find a live broadcast of the UN. It wasn’t hard. He found 7 of them, but found only one with subtitles. No one could read that much at once. Every ambassador was yelling at the top of their voice. Except one. The ambassador for... Mauritius. Jordan didn’t know who they were exactly, but they spoke English. He couldn’t hear them, but he was fairly sure that he knew what they were saying: “Turn on the lights.” He quickly changed the channel. There was a satellite image of earth from space. He could see a lot of water and not much land, and no ice at all. There was a much faster rotation, and earth was hugely tilted on its axis. Although a lot of light seemed to be coming out from under the water... And the water was already evaporating. The light was coming from several more places now, and it was evaporating even faster. There were heaps of clouds caused by the heated up water. It would take a while, but the immediate problem, at least, was solved. Epilogue: Four Seasons Lake Victoria, Republic of the Congo, May 21, 2013 Today was the day it ended. Two seasons ended. The world’s top scientists – and Jordan – had calculated exactly which comets needed to be nudged where. It had taken a month to figure out where comets needed to go, but NASA wasn’t too happy about giving up eight rockets and it took a while for them to get there. Rockets had been sent to both poles, both magnetic poles, both tropics, the moon, and now the equator. Morana had gone to all the southern locations, Jordan the northern. Jordan was currently at the Greenwich observatory, looking at how close it was to the equator, while Morana was there, waiting for the comet. She was standing outside her Dad’s car, waiting for it, when her phone rang. She immediately reached into her pocket and picked it up. “Hi Morana, the comet’s just about to come.” Jordan. No surprise there. “Okay, how long?” “About a minute.” “Right. I still don’t see why you didn’t come here.” “We’re not made of money. We could barely afford the first three flights.” “Fair enough.” “It should be there in about 5 seconds.” “Okay, bye.” Morana hung up, then looked up. Of course, it was there. A massive comet, about the size of her house times five. As soon as it hadpassed, Morana’s phone rang again. She picked it up. “Hello again.” “Hi. The rotation is fixed. Well, almost, it might take a while for it to take effect, but it’ll be fine within a month.” “Good. Bye.” “Bye.” This time Jordan hung up. It was over. After two years, it was finished. Finally, the equator could go back to just the heat. Category:Opalsaloony Category:Stories